Deep Cover Brown Ale

Deep Cover Brown Ale. Left Hand Brewing. I hate to say it, but right off the bat Left Hand commits the cardinal website sin: an all-Flash site. Even worse, the front "page" of the site is an age verification check—and regular readers know how I just love those. I hate to go off on a tangent here, but having an all-Flash site is about the worst kind of web presence a brewery could have; there are no direct URLs to link to, I can’t copy and paste text at all, there’s no accessibility, it’s resource-intensive…

Okay, enough. I’ll write a Beer Hacker article soon on the subject. In the meantime, back to the beer.

It’s an English Brown Ale, very easy drinking at 4.23% alcohol by volume. It came with my Beer of the Month selection earlier in the year.

Appearance: Deep copper-brown beer with a thin and fizzy cola head that fell almost right away.

Smell: Very prominent notes of caramel and roasted brown malts. A touch of chocolate, maybe hazelnut.

Taste: Nutty and buttery, with a nice interplay of some lightly caramelized sugars and roasty, coffee-like grains. Not burnt in character at all, though—it’s much more of a roasted nut / toasted granola character. Sweet with very little hop character.

Mouthfeel: Smooth, a little syrupy though it’s lighter than medium-bodied.

Overall: Very pleasant nut brown ale—roasty without being harsh or astringent or burnt at all. Tasty.

One Response to Deep Cover Brown Ale

The one thing that the Left Hand web site does give you is a sense of entertainment. The site is filled with eye candy. But yes, from a linkability and probably findability on Google, it’s not going to help itself with a Flash design. They should try giving the visitor an option much like what New Belgium did – a high graphics version and a lower tech linky version.

The beer itself was OK. Not a real stand out, especially if you are used to big taste imperials or IPAs. I used to love browns as one of my favorite styles, but since getting into so many other styles, browns seem a bit bland by nature.